DLC #144 - Call of Duty : Black Ops - Rezurrection Map Pack

Once I'd finally finished up the Annihilation Map Pack back in January 2021, I felt like I was practically over the hill and Black Ops was, at last, merely a formality - A judgement I don't think I could have gotten more wrong.

There haven't been many more games I have frequently had to re-visit as much as Black Ops 1, and the fact I still have an entire catalogue of DLC packs to go through with Black Ops 2 still fills me with dread. It's been a very mentally exhausting experience trying to finish this game to 100% completion, but we have finally managed to get there.

The Rezurrection Map Pack adds 6 new trophies to the Black Ops list, purely focused around the new Moon map, which adds a completely different dynamic to the zombies experience.

It has to be mentioned that I seriously dislike the Moon setting, and this was my least favourite DLC pack within Black Ops as a direct result.

I hate the way player movement is impacted by gravity because it makes it harder to fight and escape zombies. I hate the randomly spawning astronaut that grabs you and teleports you to another part of the map, detaching you from your squad. I hate the P.E.S system because you can't survive in certain areas of the map without making sure you're wearing one. I hate the launch-pads in the Biodome that will kill you if you don't land safely on the padded parts of the floor.

These mechanics have a direct impact on the difficulty of the trophies too, and they all offer perilous situations that cost me on numerous occasions when all I was trying to focus on was fulfilling the requirements of the trophies at hand. It becomes a real pain, and having to juggle these environmental challenges whilst going for a complete set of trophies at the same time is hard work.

The Easter Egg trophy is, thankfully, fairly forgiving this time round compared to the Annihilation Map Pack, and can actually also be done solo, though a team is always the recommended way to approach any Easter Egg trophy, in my opinion anyway.

The other trophies are fairly straight forward too, though a couple of the required tasks at hand will need you to accumulate a reasonable amount of points. The "Fully Armed and Operational" trophy requires you to Pack-A-Punch 3 weapons simultaneously, which will cost 5,000 points each, as well as obtaining the Mule Kick perk, allowing you to wield 3 weapons at once, which will cost an additional 4,000 points. The expenditure of the 3 weapons on top will mean you'll need in excess of around 20,000 points for this, so may need to progress fairly deep into a game to achieve it.

The same logic can be applied for the "Perks in Spaaaaaace!" trophy, which is awarded for purchasing every perk in one game, which will require a combination of 17,500 points across the 8 perks available throughout the map. It is possible to grab these within the same game, like I did, but you're probably better off separating them.

However, the overall difficulty of this DLC pack peaks specifically with one trophy;

Ground Control - In Moon, prevent each excavator from breaching the base in one game.

The "Ground Control" trophy, awarded for preventing each excavator from breaching the base in one game, requires you to stop the giant saw from penetrating 3 separate areas of the map within the same game, using the hacking tool in order to get back to the starting area and hack the relevant terminal to prevent the excavation process.

The 3 different areas are Tunnel 6, Tunnel 11 (which are both situated either side of the starting area) and Bio-dome, which is the large area found on the other side of the map. You're given advance warning at the start of the round via an announcement that excavation of one of these areas is to commence, from which point you have around 2-3 minutes to get back to the starting area with the hacking tool and hack the relevant terminal to cease the process. You'll receive a further warning at 60 and 30 seconds remaining, and if you don't make it back to the starting area in time to hack the terminal, the excavation process will occur and you'll fail this trophy.

There are 2 main things that complicate this trophy. The first one is the fact that the excavation announcement is not at set intervals, and the first one usually occurs anywhere between rounds 3-7 within my experience, and will follow a similar pattern thereafter, making it hard to predict how many rounds you're going to need to playthrough in order to be able to prevent excavation for the 3 different areas.

The second complication is that you're not guaranteed to be given the chance to excavate all 3 areas within the first 3 announcements, and there could be duplication along the way where you've already prevented excavation of one area that pops up again within a latter round where you're left still waiting for the first call of another area, which prolongs the amount of waves you have to attempt to stay alive for. This is definitely the bigger issue of the 2, though it does help ever so slightly that you do not need to prevent excavation for the same area more than once in a game, and therefore can afford to allow the breach to occur in any given area you may have already prevented once prior.

For a bit of context, in my eventually successful run, I managed to finally excavate all 3 different areas at wave 24 after a pattern that went as follows; Tunnel 6, Tunnel 11, Tunnel 6, Tunnel 11 and then Bio-dome, meaning I had a call to excavate both tunnels before even getting a first call for a warning breach of the Bio-dome, and this was a common theme within this trophy. 

By the time you start to reach the latter teens upwards, things begin to start getting hectic, and there were a handful of occasions I was attempting the trophy where we got so deep into the rounds, we eventually got overwhelmed and lost the game by just waiting on the final area we needed excavation for, which was a huge frustration. This was combined with the game mechanics I have mentioned above also contributing to the experience. Imagine trying to scramble back to the starting area with the hacker, which requires you to abandon the P.E.S, so not only am I gradually losing oxygen and dying, I'm trying to dodge hordes or zombies with zero gravity movement as well as an NPC astronaut attempting to grab me. The further you get into the game with duplication of areas, the tougher it'll get, but even if you're lucky, you're probably looking towards the late teen rounds at the very minimum, so skill does play a fairly large part in obtaining these trophies because you'll need to prove you can advance this game mode.

I did thankfully have 2 very good players to help me through, and whilst you can do this trophy solo, I would recommend some competent players to help out if you can find them. It will significantly increase your chances of success if you're running these latter rounds with a good team by your side who can focus on clearing the hordes whilst you look after the excavation process whenever required to. It is possible solo, but I just don't think I'm at that level of being good enough to reach round 24 on my own.

This is the toughest trophy within the entire Blacks Ops DLC set, which subsequently makes this the toughest pack. I have no idea how many attempts this took me, due to the fact I've dipped in and out of Black Ops over the years so often, and it is incredibly demotivating to get close, battle so hard through so many rounds, and yet still fail - Which is mostly the reason I've always been in and out with this game, and that goes for ventures within some of the other DLC packs here too.

This is ultimately a strong 100% completion to have as part of the collection. Not only a challenging set of DLC lists, courtesy of a change in direction to the zombies mode trophies in comparison to their debut in World at War, but it's important to acknowledge the challenge that zombies also bought to this games main list before we got even more of it here for Blacks Op 1. More to follow for Blacks Ops 2...

DLC #143 - Dishonored - The Brigmore Witches

The final venture into Dishonored comes in the form The Brigmore Witches DLC - The second half of the two-part story-driven offering within this set of trophies.

The finale of the Knife of Dunwall DLC ended with the revelation that "Delilah", the figure Daud was to seek on behalf of the Outsider, is a leader of a cult of witches, and her main driver was to use witchcraft in order to possess Emily Kaldwin, and use this possession in order to become the heir to the throne after Daud had executed Jessamine Kaldwin.

It does a nice job of tying things together and making sense of the more expansive background story they have chosen to given Daud within these 2 DLC packs.

Due to the fact this is a direct carry on from the first DLC, there isn't anything to mention that's new or stand-out. The concept works exactly the same, with 3 new missions to complete in various ways, using the same powers and weaponry you already had at your disposal. 

The 10 trophies also follow the same blueprint, so expect a similar experience in practically every sense, though there are a couple of subtle differences within the trophies here that are certainly important to point out.

As with Knife of Dunwall, there is a requirement to complete the DLC twice courtesy of trophies awarded for completing all 3 chapters, and consequently concluding the story, in both low and high chaos, along with a necessity to complete a full playthrough of the DLC without alerting or killing anybody too. As before, this is best played in tandem with the low chaos playthrough, which is recommended as the second run (even though it didn't quite go to plan for myself).

All very straight-forward, however the subtle differences mentioned above to the trophy list here are certainly worth noting;

Enough Coin to Disappear - You survived the Brigmore Witches in low chaos with 10,000 coins

The "Enough Coin to Disappear" trophy, awarded for surviving the Brigmore Witches in low chaos with 10,000 coins is actually a continuation trophy designed to be earned across both playthroughs of the 2 story-driven DLC packs. It requires you to reach the end of Daud's story with both the requirements of finishing it in low chaos, but also having collected 10,000 coins out of all the available loot across all chapters within both halves of the story.

As standard practice goes for most trophy hunters, researching your trophy lists will allow you to scope the requirements of this trophy out early, but there are important things to note here;

Firstly, you still need to make sure you're fulfilling this requirement on your low chaos run, which naturally means you'll also be trying to beat the DLC without being spotted, and also without killing someone, so it quickly becomes a bit of a juggling act to keep on top of everything at once.

The Brigmore Witches DLC has around 7,000 (not exact) coins on offer, which brings us to the second important point to note. You'll need around 3,000 coins carried over from the Knife of Dunwall DLC, using that save to ensure you start the Brigmore Witches with enough coin to reach 10,000 - This is exactly where the benefits of researching your trophy lists ahead of time really come to the fore.

It's also worth noting that you cannot really afford to spend money on weapons, equipment, upgrades or favours, which are tempted at you by the game at the beginning of each of the 3 chapters, as this will eat into your current cumulative total. If you're pursuing a low chaos run, mostly weapons and equipment are surplus to requirements anyway, but it's good practice to avoid the purchase menu altogether.

It didn't really catch me out much, but it did add an extra dimension to how I approached the low chaos run knowing I had to go round gathering coin whilst already trying to be stealthy for the trophies awarded for finishing the DLC without alerting or killing anyone. Save often is the best advice I can give.

Just on a final general note, I somewhat stumbled through this pack in comparison to the Knife of Dunwall, which I managed to complete exactly to plan.

I completed my first run of this DLC in order to obtain the high chaos trophy, however, after completing the first mission in low chaos, and the final 2 missions in high chaos, I still got awarded the low chaos ending. For whatever reason, the game calculated that this equated to low chaos overall, so I had to repeat it a second time for the no alert, no kill and 10,000 coin run, which I managed to do successfully.

I then went in for a third run to order to get the high chaos trophy, attempting to bypass everything but chuck a few kills in to make sure I was finishing the level with high chaos, which worked for the first 2 chapters. I then scored low chaos on the final chapter, to then be awarded a low chaos rating overall. I couldn't make any sense of this at all as I prepared for a fourth run, extremely sick of Dishonored by this stage.

I made a point to kill everything that stood in my way on a last run, and finally managed to complete this DLC pack across 4 playthroughs, when in reality, it should have been done in 2.

But done it is, and that adds another full completion to the trophy collection. I will still maintain the Dunwall City Trials were the peak of this entire journey, and after pre-emptively assuming these final 2 pieces of story-driven DLC would go down without a hitch, in typical fashion, it didn't quite go to that exact plan, though it still wasn't too bad in the end.

In normal circumstances, you can probably expect to spend another 8-10 hours on a list that is practically the same as the previous DLC pack, but factor that in as more like 12-14 for my chaos-based mishaps along the way via slightly butchered methodology on the way to the overall end-goal.